Gwynnett St

312 Graham Ave., Brooklyn. (347-889-7002)

The whiskey’s in the bread and the almonds are in the cocktails at Gwynnett St., a contrarian establishment named for a street that no longer exists serving defiantly grownup food to Williamsburg’s skinny-jeans crowd. Where else would you find a perfectly good wagyu steak hidden underneath some watercress (talk about burying the lede!), or fiddlehead ferns, the prom queens of the farmers’ market, outmatched by giant stalks of spinach, served crunchy-raw, in a spectacular appetizer salad?

This is food that’s meant to challenge you, which is presumably why the kitchen presents it as art: the plating tends to the starkly asymmetrical, with a brushstroke of beet or some stippled rhubarb dust around the edge. But this isn’t molecular gastronomy (although the chef, Justin Hilbert, used to work at WD-50), and you won’t walk away hungry, not least because of that whiskey bread: springy, slightly sour, and moist like banana bread without the bananas, served with cultured Vermont butter melted to the point where no knife is required.

The five-dollar loaf has become so popular that the servers provide it on more of an opt-out basis. You shouldn’t. Nor should you skip the cocktails. The Rye Tai—the one with the almond syrup—is a bizarre hybrid, made with rum, of course, but also apricots. It’s as refreshing as its tropical antecedent, though thankfully less sweet. There are more surprises to come: a maitake mushroom comes to the table dripping with what you might think is melted cheese but is actually lardo. This turns out to be a good thing, because the salted pork fat brings out the delicate umami flavor of the mushroom even better than a blanket of cheese could. It has lately become necessary for all ambitious restaurants to serve an egg appetizer; here, it’s slow poached, with the egg floating in an especially fragrant broth of braised pork and Pecorino with green peas and celtuce, a Chinese lettuce.

Also delightfully aromatic is the Amish chicken, served on “burnt hay,” which smokes up at the table and tastes like a brisk walk through the woods. The salmon comes with a fragrant oyster cream, and the miniature cabbage leaves accompanying it resemble oyster shells. This being Willamsburg, the server is quick to point out that there is an entrée with tofu and a dessert without gluten. But whereas the tofu is the least successful dish of the night (the chicory that comes with it tastes unfortunately like muddy peanut butter), the gluten-free dessert is a triumph. It’s a particularly elaborate version of a meringue, which begins with birch bark steeped in sugar syrup and finishes with a powder of roasted cashews. Like much of the menu, a dessert listed as “mint, milk and green strawberries” comes with an extended explanation tableside that it does not require to be enjoyed. The “mint” part is a fluorescent-green chewy sponge cake, and although it looks like space-age packing material you’ll devour it. (Open Mondays through Saturdays for dinner. Entrées $18-$28.) ♦

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